Full Text of my Interview with Cipher!

Now HERE'S the crazy shit! This is why it's nice to have a blog.

I had my interview with Cipher published in the spring issue of Clamor Magazine. (They're an awesome publication that will appeal to progressives, punks, DIY kids, and anyone who's generally into indie culture/politics.) Cipher is an excellent hardcore band from Long Island who set amazing sociopolitical lyrics to VERY heavy, danceable music.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is the full text of the interview on which my article was based. I've made minor readability edits to some of the band members' typos, but for the most part left their words intact. Enjoy!

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DB: I read on your website something about the hardcore scene losing touch with its roots. What do you see as the biggest problems facing the scene today?

Moe: It’s a frustrating and complex phenomenon. As things get bigger - meaning more people buy Hardcore records and there’s more money in Hardcore - more and more people that simply want to profit off the culture and community get involved in it.

Money is not bad. There’s nothing wrong with bands being able to eat on the road or pay their rent off of their music.. That’s a beautiful thing. What’s really wrong is marketing people, executives, PR folks, and others that never went to a show dictating how our culture and community will be depicted and how our stories are going to be told. So now people think that they can buy a few records and wear some clothes and be part of some “underground scene.” In fact, the superficial elements, the fashion, the romance, and the glamour have taken such a front seat, it’s like the music is simply a vehicle for everything else. And people forget that punk and hardcore is rebel music. There’s very little dissent or critique on these records nowadays. People are too busy trying to convince themselves they’re living in a Def Leppard video. It’s amazingly cheesy and trite, yet it sells and it’s surprisingly popular.

It’s American excess with no critique, no challenging commentary, nothing.

Danny: To me the biggest problem facing the scene is the corporate influence. A hardcore show to kids today is nothing more than a concert event. The scene lacks the community of yesteryear. Generally, kids aren’t giving back to the scene, all they do is take and that’s what the corporate world looks for. A lot of bands that get lumped into the hardcore genre, incorporate a modern hardcore musical framework but they lack the integrity, sense of community, and ethic that is hardcore to me and our fellow scene veterans. Hardcore is now more accessible, which isn’t a bad thing for people like our selves who want our music and message to spread. It’s just a different time now. To illustrate, compare your reaction to seeing a kid in with a Bane shirt five years ago, to your current reaction stemming from seeing a bunch of 12 year olds in Comeback Kid shirts. Seeing someone wearing a hardcore or punk T-shirt is no longer a indicator that this person is part of any community.

Another problem facing the scene from a musical standpoint is that there are new bands coming out whose influences are current mediocre metal-core bands. What good is going to come out of that?


DB: To get a bit more specific on that last question: I know you guys participated in the filming of the documentary AfroPunk. I still haven't seen it, but I checked out the website. It looks awesome! Before I saw the website, I would be hard-pressed to name many black hardcore/punk musicians—all I really personally knew of was Howard from Blood Has Been Shed, Carley Coma, and (the obvious) Bad Brains. I could probably brainstorm up a couple of other minority punks—a few Asian dudes come to mind—but it's still obvious just by the lack of representation that there's racism in the scene. And of course there's always been the dark underside of punk, which is the white power movement.

Have you guys encountered racism in the scene? And not just the overt kinds (like neo-nazis). Have you ever had any bad run-ins with punks and hardcore kids who wanted to think they were open-minded, but were actually doing/saying something racist? Do you think the legacy of the original nazi punks has stuck around even though a lot of crews (in the early days) and Anti-Racist Action groups (more recently) have tried to isolate them and push them out? If possible I really want all the members of the band to take a stab at this one.

Moe: Just the other day at a show in Syracuse some kid confronted me and said, “dude, you look exactly like Darryl from the Bad Brains.” I thought that was the funniest thing ever. Funny in an unsetting way, of course. This kid was trying to compliment me and all he could say is “you look like another black dude with dreads.” I look nothing like Darryl Jennifer, or the dude from Stuck Mojo or the dude form Sevendust, or Howard Jones, and we sound absolutely nothing like any of those bands yet we always get comparisons. That type of not-quite-overt racism is stuff we need to deal with everyday. I mean, we actually have a few reviews that start off, “yo, fans of Stuck Mojo...” are you kidding me? Stuck Mojo? Have you listened to Stuck Mojo before? Me neither?!? So to say we sound like or were influenced by them is laughable!! Or “Sevendust fans should steer away.” Hell yeah Sevendust fans should steer away from us! We sound nothing like them.

As soon as they see that there are black folks in the band they immediately assume, “oh rap-rock, or rapcore.” We’re thinking, “have they listened to our record?” Listen to a Sick of It All record. Is that rapcore? A lot of the Hardcore of the late eighties and early nineties from New York had a staccato vocal delivery. Sure we’re influenced by Hip-Hop and other musical forms but a lot of people make unfair comparisons that we feel have more to do with race than anything else. Limp Bizkit is rapcore.

I could go on and on. I think every day we encounter some form of it. Or these “tough guy” idiots who refer to themselves as ”nigga.” It’s like the most insane thing to hear a white kid actually refer to himself like that. It’s tiring calling these kids out. Every single one, every time they say something? After a while I think, “you know, it’s not my job to play racism police to white kids in the hardcore scene.” It’s a tiring and unrewarding profession.

These kids don’t feel comfortable in living out their own identity and culture so they appropriate other cultures in a really superficial way. They think black culture is what they see on TV and they liken that with being tough, so they emulate that. Most of these kids are from the suburbs and any brush with that life is something they elect to experience. It’s like a little adventure for them. It’s a topic I could go on and on and on about. I haven’t even touched the surface.

I could really critique your question. I mean, there’s actually not a whole lot of black folks in punk and hardcore but our contributions are huge. We’re usually doing pretty visible/meaningful things in the scene: putting on shows, in bands, etc. But we’re invisible so a lot of people conveniently forget these contributions. The Afropunk message board has a running list of hardcore bands with black members in them. It’s pretty long!!

It’s funny to say buy often times, people don’t even realize certain people are black, like the bassist of Fall Out Boy. I bet most people think he’s just kinda tan or something. So the fact that we’re being rendered invisible is not surprising. America has a rich history of rendering people of color invisible.

Racism at its worst is insidious and subtle. It shows itself through people you know and like, people you live with or even date, your co-workers, your friends. It’s in us all. White supremacy permeates this society, plain and simple.

You hardly see flagrant Nazi-style racism. What’s more ubiquitous is the racism that plays itself out without stating itself. It’s the type of racism that white people can deny and claim is paranoia, but it’s real and more pervasive and more troubling than some drunk Nazi dude spewing racial epithets.

Mark: Well, I don’t know about the other guys in the band, but I myself have encountered some racism in the scene. I was about to walk into a venue to hand out samplers when a group of white hard-core kids (who happened to not notice me) made a harsh racist comment towards a black man having some difficulty getting out of a parking spot. I confronted them and they immediately left before other people realized what they said or reacted against it.

I generally think that hardcore kids aren't as open minded as what they might claim themselves to be. We live in a world in where racism is subtle enough to where people don't realize what they say might be offensive to others. The only way we can ever eradicate this type of racism is by continuing to confront the ones who speak it, live it, and replicate it.

There are groups that still represent nazi-punk beliefs in the present day. Although we might have anti-nazi they persist. The fact that they feel comfortable shows that we live in a culture that continues to create an environment where white supremacist organizations, Nazis, and others feel welcome.


DB: Let's flip it around and take a look at the positive side, too. A lot of hardcore groups like to say they have a positive message or a message of hope but if you look at their lyrics, there's no basis for that claim—they're just as depressed and hopeless as Korn or anybody else. I was psyched to see that there is actually hope and positivity and humanity in your lyrics. What are some of the signs of hope that you have seen recently—in the band, in the scene, on tour, in our nation? What are the things that renew your faith and give you the energy to keep resisting?

Moe: We played Victoria, TX and to see the heart of those kids was amazing. They really loved music and they dedicated their lives to the Hardcore community. A couple that put on our show had a hardcore wedding. Isn’t that amazing? And this community was so genuine. Mostly Mexican kids, all working class. These kids were not caught up on the hype fashion, and crap that’s been attaching itself to hardcore. It’s good to know that scenes like that are still vibrant. We met a lot of bands and a bunch of kids that were tired of the soap-opera-core. And these kids were putting on shows, playing in bands, making zines. The DIY underground is still alive, we saw it on tour.

Globally, we need to be clear and recognize when revolution is taking place right before us. “The revolution” is a concept that is unhealthy to presume will happen in the future. Not only can it be a very real and palpable thing in our lives, it is really happening outside the context of North America.

Look at the Zapatista movement in Mexico and the very real democratic alternatives to capitalism they’re creating, look at what’s going on Argentina with the autonomous movements, Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution, and even the movements in Brazil. Look what’s happening across the world. The world is shifting from the structural adjustment programs and the globalized capitalism and looking for alternatives. These are exciting times. We should be very hopeful for the future.

DB: A lot of the issues you confront in your lyrics/song explanations require a very specific vocabulary. To me, it makes sense, but that's partly because I studied some of those same issues and learned the same vocabulary in college. Is it ever frustrating to have that kind of limitation placed on you? Obviously you don't have to be college educated to be part of the resistance, but how do you overcome that language obstacle?

Moe: We never talk down to the listener. Yeah, I read a lot and have a certain degree of academic privilege, but we try to make the music accessible while using everything we have within us to present our ideas. Limiting the words I use would be like limiting the notes a instrumentalist could play. It’s stifling.

Our fans read up on the stuff they don’t get and they actually learn through our music. We’ve had countless fans come up to us after a show and say, “yo I didn’t get the lyrics at first but they inspired me to read up on this or pick up that book and now I get it.” If we dumbed everything down we’d impinge upon their opportunities to grow though the work. However, there is a balance. If your work is super inaccessible, nobody’s gunna get it. That’s one of the reasons we write explanations for each song, to give folks a road map to interpret our music. We give people a piece without spoiling the fun of exploring the work and putting things together themselves.

DB: Ok, here's an easy one: What have you guys been rocking out to lately? Are there any new albums on the horizon that you're really excited for?

Moe: I’m look forward to the new Saigon and Black Star records. I’m listening to Marvin Gaye, Between the Buried and Me, and Bad Brains.

Danny: I’m currently really psyched on the new Ion Dissonance record. The new Coheed and Cambria and Meshuggah rock hard as well.

Mark: I am currently listening to Ion Dissonance's new release entitled "Solace" and I can never get enough of Underoath's latest "They're only chasing safety". I don't that I am looking forward to anything besides the new Deftones cd entitled "B Sides and Rarities"...